After having this awesome printer since the summer its time to show some of the things I've been working on or completed.

Nearly everything I print is Star Wars or space related so here is goes.

I'm print out an R0 dome from The Force Awakens.

3D printing a R0 dome build blog.

First of foremost thanks to Tiny P. who modeled this in 3D and let me print this cool dome out. If you want to print this project out, contact Tiny P. Don't PM for me the files I'm not giving out the STL files as he requested.

The dome is pretty simple

Lower ring 10 days to printDome section 15 days to printTop Dome plate 1 day printRadar Eye 1 day printGreeblies and boxes 1 day to print.

So this took me a month now stop to print out, it used about 4 spools of PLA6 shells thick 50% infill on all parts.

This is part of the lower ring. The lower ring is actually 2 parts that will be bonded together. This part is being print and later flipped over and it goes on to the Rockler ring. If you look at the photo you can see part of the print is about to come off the print bed. When I started this project I had several issues with prints coming off the bed. So I experimented with various heat levels on the bed and the blue tape.

The small parts print out fine with my N2 plus but parts that take over 1 day, like nearly this entire project I came up with a better method to get them to stick to the bed by trial and error. In the end I had to resort to over kill methods to get this to print out.

What I eventually learned was I cake on that elmers glue all over the area the raft is going to be laid down. I also run the print bed at 75c until the part is about 1 inch high then I turn it down to 60c. Then after the raft is made and the part is being printed. I go back with the elmers glue stick and I cake more on just with the raft and the print bed creating a bead of glue. I'll use my fingers to caulk that glue to the raft and make sure you don't see any air bubbles in the raft. You can see the glue caked on the raft above. Once I started doing this, I had ZER0 print fails or print lifting off the bed. So if you're having troubles with PLA sticking to your bed give that method a shot.

After 3 days you'll have the lowest part of the lower ring printed out. Then I used loctite superglue jel to bond the 3 rings together. Then I tried out that 'friction welding' method on this part. It took me an hour to just get these 3 little area friction welded. I had to come up with something faster for the rest of this build. I've been 3D printing for 4 months and this is the first time I had parts to bond and finish.

This is the other side of it. It will go over your Rockler ring and just barely. So that means I had to take my Rockler and drill and tap 10-24 bolts into it. Something to consider if you do this, how will that work since there is no room to have a nut hold the studs up form those bolts we use on R2-D2.

This is the top part of the ring. Again I superglued it together and used a blue strap to hold it together overnight.

I used PLA to stick on the little alignment holes. TIP don't use many of them or you'll never get the 2 parts to marry. It's not required to use them all just a few to align your parts.

Time to marry these 2 parts. I used alittle of everything. I used allot of superglue, blue straps and then realized I needed some large clamps and drove to Harbor Freight that sells junky tools and bought some clamps. Before I used the clamps I had too big of a gap with both parts of the rings. But that did the trick.

Next with the clamps and everything still on the part. I took the part outside and did what I call 'redneck 3D printing by hand'. I got my solder gun out and put a round tip on it and turned it up as high as it can go, around 800 I think. Then I used some PLA as my beed and used the soldering gun to melt the PLA and join the 2 parts together. In under 1 hour I had welded over 6 foot of PLA. I started inside, then did small parts of the outer ring.

Then I took off the clamps and continued to weld all the area the clamps were blocking.

This is how it looks after welding. It have to say this is really, really solid and a bit heavy.

I replaced the roundish tip on the soldering gun with a long flat tip. Now I'm going to do the same redneck 3D printing and shave the outside. I've done level 5 smooth wall before so I have a good hand and eye for this. I didn't weld every seam, the smaller gaps will get filled with putty and XTC.

The video above shows the 2nd time it failed and usually its around layer height 1800 or so. Man that sucks to print something for days and days only to have it fail. Not only that have the entire 3D printer fail as well. When the print failed in the video above so did the printer. I turned off the printer after it failed and the printer refused to turn off. The touch screen was frozen and all I could do is wait for its battery to die hours later and try to reboot. It would not turn on after a reboot and I learned the Linux system of the touch screen suffered a firmware crash. So I had to send the touch screen back to China.

2 weeks later I got a brand new (3 touch screen so far in 5 months ) with updated hardware and reset switch incase it freezes.

70 hours later after my 3rd attempt I got this part to print out. Then after I took this photo I realized I need to clean this 3D printer as its dirty as crap. I used supports for this print but later realized I didn't need it. Printing at 6 shell thick at 50% infill the upper walls of this part are pretty much solid plastic.

This part took 4 days to print out. Tiny P. has the STL files for small and large printers. For the large printers the dome is made up of 4 sections. The smaller front and side section will be exactly 1 spool of PLA at the settings I used. So 2 spools for the dome, 1 spool on the ring and 1 more spool on the rest of the parts. I used no supports only a raft for the rest of the prints.

After I came up with my cake on the glue stick method and only a part this large I use an entire glue stick. The printer is reliable as heck and now I'm at the point I have so much confidence in my printer I'm shocked if a print were to fail. I don't even bother turning on my remote camera system to monitor it as it just works great. The resolution of the prints is awesome and in big picture of all of this is I really don't know what the hell I'd doing as I'm just a rookie who jumped into the 3D printer world with both feet after seeing Cary's BB-8 at Phoenix Comicon.

One more thing I forgot to add. Since this part has no support and tips a bit backwards. I'm pretty sure the raft is glued down really good to the bed, but sometimes the part warps or lifts off the raft. Solution: put a small bead of superglue to the bottom of the part and the raft. When a part takes 4 days, I'll go the extra mile to make sure it works and I don't throw away a spool of PLA and days of printing.

Using pretty much the same method to marry up the 4 dome parts. I'm welding the parts togther, also welded in the 3 coffin boxes that hold the greeblies. Also welded in a top retaining ring to hold this together.

Basic test fit. There is slight warpage to fix up around some of the lower dome area. Now domes the unfun stuff, post processing these parts to get it ready for paint.

Top dome parts printed out. Now I'm just experimenting and learning how to best finish this either with puddy or XTC 3D. It should be ready to paint in a few days.

This is eventually going to be black but sort of looks like R4-M9 or R0-M9 now.

Last edited by redUFO on Sun Mar 05, 2017 10:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

With Xmass and family around, it's hard finding time to finish this. I was hoping to have this done by next weekend. I can see that won't happen because this black gloss paint I have is not forgiving at all. It shows every mistake and pit hole under Sunlight. I have the ring almost ready for another coat of primer and it should be close.

The dome I put on about 3.5 layers of XTC 3D. I found using it in many light coats is better then trying it thick or it runs. Away even with 3 or more coats of that then you have a surface over the PLA that you can use an orbital and it will give rid of about 90% of the print lines. I should have done all of that instead with green puddy, its easier to sand it don't take 5 hours to dry. Plus that green puddy is easy to get out of the detail lines of the square boxes. So I have many hours infront of me detailing that with a file getting some of that crap out. I put quite a bit of XTC on the top plate it and it after sanding it still needed spots of greed puddy. It would be cool to print out a R4 dome like this someday.

I got the top plate a coat of gloss Black as it passed the test with 2 coats or of primer and examined under the Sunlight. NOPE. The black gloss showed tons of areas on it not perfect, so time to sand it off and redo it. Somehow after the black paint is on, up to my standards and whatnot. I plan to then paint on 4 pie panels, because what's a dome without some pie panels on it? Its a sad dome.:p

I'm not sure how I'm going to do this yet, more trial and errors. I already found center of the dome plate but I gotta use a compass and mark the areas where the pie panels are layed out. Then mask it and do all of that without damaging the black gloss paint. I'm open to ideas on that. There are no pie panels etched into the part, that's optional on my end. The bottom area of the dome ring is all over the place so later after I fix up most of the dome I'll need to flip it over and fix any areas not round enough to make a nice lower ring. Tiny spend I think a good deal of time modeling this and I want to make a quality dome out of this.

This is the last image of it primed before it went outside and got painted black. This has several layers of primer, but it was sanded off alot and then put back on in other places. There is only so much you can see on a the post processed part with 3.5 layers of XTC 3D and green squadron puddy. The primer helped show problem areas to deal with. I fixed any warped stuff I saw on the lower ring and its turning out quite nice.

A mouse sander with 120 is helpful to a degree but I found it leaves in a pattern on the part. So an orbital sander with 120 grit got rid of all the stuff in the end. I did several passes on this dome. I filed out all the gunk in the panel areas. I sanded and used putty on it with direct Sunlight on it. Seemed flawless until I put it in a dark room and put a powerful spotlight down it. Then saw several more defects and flaws and the orbital cleaned that up.

After all of that I put on a couple of decent thick layers of primer, not so much that it runs but enuff that you'll sand about 1/4 of it back off.

Started with 220 grit, then 320, 400 and 600. You need enough paint on so several layers of sand paper don't go back to the XTC. If you don't have enuff primer on it kind of defeats the purpose because you end up back down to the XTC and green stuff. Even if your part is as smooth as a babys ass your paint has to be also because of overspray and other stuff.

The dome is now black with its first 4 layers of paint on it.

Now it has to sit for 3 days until its get more work on it. This paint needs atleast 2 full days to dry and maybe 3 to be safe. If you try to touch it after 1 day your fingerprints end up in the paint and who wants that?

So Saturday when it's safe to handle the part and the lower ring more work will happen. The lower ring is now black with a silver upper ring, then it will be masked and the copper color added. What I learned on painting the dome is the 3 coffins and the 9 squares are problematic to paint and for me. I'll end up putting on 12 layers of black paint before I call this done. You'll probably run into this also if you paint your dome white.

Next, I'll use my airbrush that has a very small blast radius and I'll color in the coffins with deep black. There is absolutely no way to get them a good coat of black without it running on the outside of the dome painting with a spay can with a 3 inch blast radius. Same can be said for the inner channels of the 9 squares. Saturday I'll give it a light sand with 220 in the coffins, clean out the squares over spray with a file and airbrush it. I should of did that first but I didn't see this coming until I got to it.

Then after its airbrushed a few hours later I'll put on my black gloss from the can for another coat that I'll be sanding. Same deal with the primer. I'll clean out all over spray, get the 9 squares clean up a bit, then 220 grit, 320, 400 and 600 grit on the black paint. Then with a can I'll give 2 more final layers and that should be good. I'm sure I'll see a few defects here and there, but its already very nice as is before I do all of that.

Then its electronics PSI stuff and mounting the 3 main sections together and welding them.

Bottom ring now has the black and metallic paint added. I'll be adding the copper paint sections next.

With a flash it shows the inner channels of the squares and the coffins don't have enough paint coverage and that's why it's drying and waiting for the air brush to fill those places in. If I tried to do that with a can I'd have paint running all over the place. Something to consider on your build.

On the toy I noticed it had 8 shoulder buttons and no pistons. So I turn on the 3D printer and made a batch.

They came out so nice I didn't bother with putty on them. Just painted them primer, then a few coats of black and then copper. If I saw any 3D line I just blasted it with paint more until I didn't see it.

My version.

As for the square PSI here what I did with that. I 3D printed a square that is 3.5 x 3.5 x .08 inch think, full plastic. I experienced on how thick to print it so it could diffuse light plus be bendable to meet the curve of the dome.

Then I welded that in place of the square hole. Next, I 3D printed a box that is 3.5 x 3.5 x .8 inch thick 50% infill. This makes an area so I can mount a thicker back plate with the lights on it. I put velcro on that box so the back plate comes on and off easy to turn on the lights or turn them off.

For the back plate I 3D printed a square is 3.5 x 3.5 x .125 so this more rigid and can handle been taken on and off many times. The PSI lights I used are cheap LED lights that cost about $2 bucks each. They glow from blue to green and red in an aurora type of pattern. I put velcro on the back of each light so I can experiment with positioning them.

I'm gonna record some video and take it outside before I switch this to another imperial flavor.

I'm also printing BB-8 and then a Colonial Warrior Helmet, then K-2S0 from Rogue One.

Thanks to John, Tammy, Vicki the entire Raise staff that has been very helpful to fix any printing problems and this great community here as well as the Star Wars Community that has made these stl files available to us all.

The droid is named R0-H2 its Poe Dameron's astromech he had in the Xwing when he lead the Xwing team to free Han, FN, and Chewie. This dome is 3D printed by the rest of the droid is pretty much all alumimun, its radio controlled, weights about 200 pds, costs around $10,000 and took me 4 years to complete.

My blog details the 4 different imperial domes I can put on this droid body and other robotic stuff I'm working on.

This has been done by a few others and here is my version and color scheme.

So we have in the photo what's know as the "Christie Sphere". Its the inner sphere has has 24 of the same pieces bolted together and then 8 cross braces. This was printed 50% infill out of PLA, when Raise ran out of white color I switched to blue. That part took 6 weeks to print out and then bolt up.

Then the triangles then bolt down to the inner sphere. They take about 2 days each. So in about another month I might be done with it and all of it in post processing.

The dome itself is finished and painted. This is my 2nd dome, my first dome I had in the Sun and it warped so I went Kylo Ren and destroyed it because it was weak!. So this time around I printed out the dome at 100% infill. There is more work to do on the dome. Figure out how to install magnets so I can take off the top pie panels so I can access the battery and turn on/off the lights in the dome. Also order or build and install LEDs, speakers and a USB power system.

Right now I'm taking a quick break to get started on the next imperial droid which is K-2S0 from Rogue One. This droid will stand about 6.5 to 7 feet tall. The head is nearly finished off the printer after 5 days. I estimate this will take 20=30 spools of PLA which I only buy from Raise BTW:)

This will likely take me around 8 months to print out if I stay on target. There are some huge pieces that nearly require a N2 Plus because of how long they are. The arms, legs and torso area are about 3 week prints for each part. I was sort of shocked when I saw parts taking nearly 400 hours in the preview window and required half a dozen spools of material. The torso and upper body are beyond the size of the print bed. That will need to be cut down into pieces, printed and welded back together. I think that upper body alone is a 6 week print for it. If that works, this is getting fun because these prints are so long they are a gamble on risk and reward now. So the element of will this work? Is exciting to me because K-2S0 is a challenge to print out after easier projects like droid domes and BB-8:)

Recently I had some power failures on the screen of the printer and when it rebooted I used the recovery option and so far it worked each time I needed it. That saved me days of printing and that's a really neat feature of this printer. More imperial stuff coming to this space soon and big prints showing off what this printer can do coming slowly but surely....

Also had the guts to start using the Pause button during printing long projects. I can pause the print to take a photo of it, or remove something if a support bar falls over. I don't want that to rattle inside of a head that will close itself off. Its nice to pause and take that out with out the risk of dealing with the danger of it running and trying it. I had to do this today and glad this option is there.

I got these files from a commercial site so I can't post the STLs or I would, had to sign a strict NDA type of thing to get these files. Keep in mind they aren't perfect either but are a good starting point.

The Head.

5 day print, 6 shells thick, 30% infill, bed temp 60C, PLA 222C

I'm out of black because it wasn't in stock so going with this blue. I think printing this upside down saved me many hours or even days.There is a line going around the top of the eyes that is about 1 layer off. This happened because I stopped the print with the pause button to remove supports that fell over, it was safer than trying to do that with the thing running. Which I don't ever recommend if you have to, hit pause.

I chose this angle to print it based on the 2 prongs that come out of the mouth. I needed a bit of an angle I knew the printer could do with the over hang.

Front view, there are some holes around the eyes. That happened because the support area that I mentioned I got out of the head before it closed up had been knocked over. I can fix the holes later with something.

I have met 2 other people also printing this out. One guy who lives just a few miles down the street has pretty much the entire thing printed out. The biggest challenge is the chest area which needs to be cut into about 12 pieces because its too big for my 12x12 bed.So what my friend is doing is using this for a start. Then he had more details added I believe with clay or something like this. Then he made a mold out of that and made a fiberglass version of all the parts.

This is all I need another rabbit to go down and I've been down too many rabbit holes the way it is. This will be my 5th droid when its all done if I can get them all done that is.